Silence
by rvanv
Summary: Jack's death from his point of view.


Summary: Jack's death, from his POV.This piece can be read as a sequel to "Kin," although I did not intend that. (It was actually written first.)

Rating: M for graphic unpleasantry

Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's characters, although I wish I could have protected Jack.

Note: This was my first fanfic ever—constructive comments always appreciated concerning this and subsequent writings. If you can help me improve my writing, please do so. Too many words? Too many question marks? Let me know! Thank you.

**"Silence"**

Jack lay in the dirt road gasping for air, more gurgling than anything as the blood trickled across his face and past his parched lips. His broken nose too filled with blood, and he barely sensed the glare of the noon Texas sun through eyes blinded by that same blood. The dust swirling around him stung as it settled on his burnt, battered face. Stray bits of gravel pierced his back through his blue denim shirt, which was soaked with sweat.

He knew he had little time. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, images of this and that raced desperately through his mind, some clearer than others. His life flashing before him, no doubt. But haphazardly, without direction.

His wife, dressed in a blur of red, not in the bitter present but from their rodeo days, so very long ago it seemed. A foggy picture of a pretty girl, dark-haired. She had been friendly … forward even. So much energy put into the rodeos: lots of broncos and bulls—bucking, snorting, lots of noisy action, Jack being thrown repeatedly, a sense of being nowhere and all over at once.

Then incongruously a cut to his son, more immediate, much more recent. His last birthday wasn't it? Jack had actually been home for that one. How old was Bobby? He didn't remember, but he saw how happy the kid had been to have his dad there. Yeah, the boy … what would become of him? Jack wondered if he would ever know love like Jack had, troubled as it had been. Could he? Could anyone? It would be a woman, he imagined, far easier for Bobby, a woman, everything normal, no furtive "fishing trips" to Wyoming.

He felt an alarming pang of guilt. Lord, what would they say, Bobby's friends, when they found out about Jack? Word already out in hushed tones, he knew now, too late. But open season after he was dead. "Faggot," that was the word of choice at Bobby's age, wasn't it? What was worse—being a faggot—he could hardly think the word—or leaving a kid to deal with that, with what his dad had been? His dad! Jack's mind drifted back into the blackness with no answer.

And just as easily returned in … he couldn't tell—seconds, minutes? Probably not hours. He didn't think he would count hours again.

Urgency crowded out any thoughts of his childhood. No time to waste on a blank canvas, on the nothingness of northeast Wyoming. How he had struggled to kill those painful years! When he had wanted to flee down the only road in sight but didn't have the means. Then his boyish joy at getting that rattling, beaten pickup truck, paint mostly blistered off, hitting the main road and heading south! Didn't know where he was going, just that it felt like salvation. He could not remember his father's face and did not try. He vaguely pitied his mother, did not want to think about her grief, about the room she had kept all these years, would continue to keep for him, her only reminder of her only child. No, he had long ago replaced those early years with whiskey, with driving the narrow, dusty roads of Wyoming, Texas, all points between, even Mexico via El Paso.

Traveling with new hopes, toward new hopes. Traveling toward a lifetime of dreams. Dreams about Ennis Del Mar … those goddamn dreams about Ennis Del Mar! Could have been dreams _with_ Ennis, the life that _should_ have been ….

Jack never thought much about dying—there was always _something_ to hope for, wasn't there? His eternal wish list, yeah, changing every other day to fit the realities of his life. Pretty pitiful, wasn't it? When he had last seen Ennis, on that cold spring day in May, Jack had complained, "Fuck-all has worked the way I wanted." But there in the road he reckoned that some things had worked out, some had not … his mind lingered on Ennis with that last thought. Always Ennis.

He had gotten away from that hopeless Twist ranch, though, hadn't he? Learned a few things from some of those men on the rodeo circuit, hadn't he? Jack had tried and tried again to please his father, to make it at rodeo, to hold a real job, to make a go of it with Lureen and Bobby and even her son-of-a-bitch old man. Told his daddy he'd go back to help, even told him he'd move up there with his buddy Ennis—one hell of a ranchhand he was, that Ennis!—to whip that ranch into shape, but Jack knew he'd never move back there.

Just the fact that he had found Ennis amidst the unspeakable beauty of Brokeback Mountain, though—how great that was! Yes, that alone relieved much of the ache that Jack travelled with, even if that which he wanted, needed the most, eluded him, even at the end.

True, he had almost lost Ennis with those four years apart after the magical summer on Brokeback Mountain—what was he thinking, still a crazy kid with illusions of rodeo grandeur, of riches even? On the circuit he met Lureen, and at the beginning she had been all right. Her daddy had set them both up for sure, and Jack dropped out of the rodeos that he had thrived on. He usually lost anyway, ended up with something or other broken. And why had he bothered to get anything fixed? he thought as everything seemed painfully broken anew.

Then the baby—well, Jack really hadn't known what to do about it. He figured he had seemed proud enough. Thank god it was a boy. The baby needed to be a boy, he had thought. Second best to not having any at all, in his mind. "Didn't want none a either kind," he had told Ennis.

It never occurred to him that the Twist name would have died out with him were it not for his son. Truth be told, it would have mattered little; to Jack's way of thinking he had gotten so far from his roots in Lightning Flat that he might just as well have become a new person. With a new life. And stepping into that new life, shaping that new life, Ennis …

The simple fact was that those distant days on Brokeback Mountain repeatedly drove Jack back to the man he could not stop loving. He had tried so hard to give the best moments of his life to Ennis and thought he had succeeded. As he lay dying, that fact pleased him greatly.

Had he gotten the same from Ennis? Jack thought Ennis had given him whatever love he could bring himself to share. But it wasn't enough, was it? Jack had gone to Mexico, had to go to Mexico, he was only human … and then to the rancher down the road, ah yes, the rancher. He wondered for just a second if the rancher were somewhere now, dying like him or already dead, but he hadn't invested much there and didn't really care.

Jack regretted that he was going to die still a young man, but his love for Ennis had made his life worth living, hadn't it? All that love he had given, the love he had received, whatever its nature! Even though they seldom got to see one another, Jack woke frequently with thoughts of Ennis, more than fond thoughts. He felt that Ennis was part of him down to his bones—it got so bad when they were apart, it was all Jack had to go on—and he was sure he occupied Ennis in the same way. Inconvenient maybe, but passionate always.

That last fight in May revealed those feelings all too clearly, Jack remembered. Violent accusations, recriminations—but ultimately the healing power of their incredible love for one another. In an odd way, he envied Ennis for the unrequited longings he would experience once Jack was gone for good. With that notion, Jack faded out again.

When he came to, a few minutes later, the increasingly foggy mental snapshots focused only on Ennis, above all on a moment when Ennis had come up behind him and held him … just … held … him. An early chill had taken hold of the air that evening up there on Brokeback Mountain, yet Jack remembered only that glorious embrace, felt again the comfort of leaning back, eyes closed, into Ennis's strong, protective warmth. Ennis had hummed a little for him, hadn't he? A loving, maternal gesture that had surprised both of them. That's how it was always supposed to be, wasn't it? Jack had decided.

For a blessed moment in Jack's mind, the late July heat on that godforsaken Texas road gave way to the warmth of Ennis's hand brushing lightly against his cheek.

The blazing sun spared no quarter, yet Jack grew colder with every minute.

They had run his truck off the narrow, rutted road between ranches. His jeans were torn. He had fought, but he thought he remembered being on his knees begging for his life, he wasn't sure. Just before the dusty kick in the face. One after another they took their turn. How many there were he did not remember.

His hat had gone flying, and for some reason he regretted that the most. That was so … personal. But the tire iron made him forget. And the darkness. He did not know how long he had been lying under the hot, white sky. It felt like late afternoon, but surely time did not matter anymore, did it?

Jack could not see that more than one dusty boot had crushed his beloved black hat.

The blood, his blood, tasted salty, and darkened as it dried on the massive bruises, the ones that showed. If only he could roll over, he thought in panic, the blood would drain away and he might be able to breathe. His face wouldn't have to burn in the sun.

He just wanted the chance to see Ennis again, knew he had to see him again, touch him again. Somehow, anyhow. Just wasn't ready to let go. But searing pain told him that limbs were broken, much more than limbs, and he couldn't move.

As the minutes passed, and the pain of his injuries faded in and out in his head, his helplessness turned into an ecstatic delirium. How this reminded him of when Ennis first took him! Pain, pleasure … hope. But in what order? he tried to recall. So long ago. It had always been so beautiful with Ennis, hadn't it? More than once he had convinced himself of that.

In fact Jack could stand the pain only because most of it had given way to numbness. But what he could feel hurt like hell. He would not worry about pain for long, he knew. And then there would be? His dying shouldn't remind him of that time with Ennis, he thought, of that prelude to the most beautiful time in his life. But back on that first night he hadn't known how it would turn out, _if_ it would turn out. Ennis might have killed him—Jack at first thought he was going to. It was probably a miracle that he didn't. And now … again he didn't know. He didn't believe in heaven or hell, and he just didn't know.

The countryside was so quiet. Probably not even a bird in the sky, he figured. He tried to imagine a brilliant blue sky above majestic mountains, with a soaring eagle, as close to a promised land as he would ever get.

Would Ennis think Jack was brave? Or a fool? Would he wonder about Jack's last thoughts? Would he even know that Jack had time to think before dying? Would he know that he crowded Jack's thoughts during the final moments? That if Jack's jaw weren't broken, he at least would have cracked a smile at those thoughts?

His mind jumped back to that first night in the tent, so violent, yes, but not … this kind of violence, driven by hatred. Hatred of what? He could not say. All he knew was that he had never learned to account for this kind of hatred. Not enough anyway. It was he who had taken Ennis's hand after all … he was to blame for all this, wasn't he? Ennis had warned him. But Jack had chosen to see only the other side of violence, forged by a deep unspeakable love, the explosiveness of two lonely men trying to break through their instinctive barriers.

In August he and Ennis were supposed to have been someplace in the mountains of Wyoming. It would be cold, maybe even snowing, but it would be beautiful. And the two men were so practiced at keeping each other warm! But Ennis couldn't do it. Jack did not remember why, but he hoped there was a good reason. Why it seemed to matter now he did not know.

What Jack did know is that he wanted to cry, about what might have been, about how he was never going to see Ennis again. How many of his dreams had ever been satisfied, really? The number dwindled as he lay there. He wanted to cry so badly. That much he deserved, didn't he? But he could not open his eyes for all the caked blood.

He knew he would die alone, truly alone. But something within Ennis would die too, wouldn't it? Jack did not know if he wanted that or not. One of his last thoughts: if only he had provoked Ennis to kill him when they had that last bitter argument. "What I don't know about Mexico could get you killed should I come to know about it," Ennis had threatened. He had come so close …. Ennis would have been quick, was always a sure shot, and Jack wouldn't be lying here in agony. It wasn't supposed to end this way.

Goddamn you Ennis, he thought. "Goddamn," he thought he sobbed, but through the choking blood he could make no noise. He tried, but he simply could not make a sound. He wanted to call out Ennis's name, but could not.

With his dying breath Jack could not even whisper the name of the man he loved, the person he loved more than anyone in all the world.


End file.
